Mobile app abuses like mortgage industry’s

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who negotiated a ground-breaking agreement with major banks to bail out aggrieved mortgage holders, also has brokered an agreement with six mobile platform operators to provide privacy policies for consumers who download apps. The parallels of consumer abuse by both industries — lack of information, lack of clarity about what the consumer gives up in exchange for a benefit, and opaque agreement language — are striking.

“This is not unlike what happened with the mortgage industry,” she told The Chronicle Editorial Board Wednesday, outlining the privacy abuses in the mobile app industry that her negotiation sought to address. As you download a new app to your phone, the app developer is uploading your contact list without your permission or knowledge, she said. “The vast majority of mobile apps had no privacy policy.”

Consumers were giving away the most intimate information about their lives and relationships in exchange for a cool app such as one that turned their iPhone into a flashlight.

The new privacy protections seek to give California consumers a choice about what information they will share in exchange for the use of the app — and the tools to implement the choice.

“We’re participating in a new, technological world, and we’re working these things out as we go,” Harris said.